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ARTISTS' STATEMENTS
Fion Gunn, , Monair Hyman, Maureen Kendal, Ardern Hulme-Beaman, Shoran Jiang, Nazia Parvez, Alan Hudson, Amy Jackson, Lila Moore, Audrey Mullins |
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Fion Gunn
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Fion Gunn often contemplates the impact on her own artwork from curating other artists in the digital world as well as in large-scale exhibitions. She has experienced these creative journeys through a distinctly female lens as she investigates the complex relationships between migration, displacement and transformation. Title: Odyssey: Ride by Fion Gunn "I created this work as part of an ongoing series in which I explore a central theme - that of transformative personal journeys. My own journey is played out against the backdrop of global movements- those of peoples, cultures, materials and ideas. I remain inspired by the narrative describing Odysseus’s journey as he made his way home to Ithaca in the aftermath of the Trojan war. It is a story of obstacles and hardships, errors of judgement and lessons learned, and the ultimate metaphor for our human condition, for the experience of life itself. In this manifestation of Odyssey which I created during the first lockdown of our COVID world, I wanted to capture the feelings of flux, of uncertainty, of experiencing the new and the unexpected in a way that is positive and exciting. This is a Ride and also a voyage of discovery. A short film was another offshoot of the project - 'Roller Coaster' with a soundtrack by composer Gráinne Mulvey - watch here I felt the need to create a metaphorical environment which allowed me and subsequently, the visitor to encounter flux and uncertainty in a positive way - to be transported by it. In making the VR landscape for this Odyssey, I turned to the resources of memory, imagination and all kinds of manifestations of art. This is a helter-skelter which draws on old narratives and myths, passion for seas, oceans and the creatures which inhabit them, for the revelations encountered in poetry and subliminal ‘imagined-scapes’. As someone gripped by the uber-inclusiveness of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ I wanted something of that stream of consciousness sensation to be present in my artist’s world. My fellow artists’ worlds can be accessed through portals in mine so there can be constant movement and interaction between us. We have in effect created a multiverse together. The element of differentiation i.e. including artists who have different approaches, different thematic and conceptual practices, is key, as is the consideration of multiple pathways and multiple perspectives. Multiplicity gives visitors/viewers choice and empowers them to decide how they will navigate and interact with the experience. When starting out on this project - working with ideas around interactive ‘conversation’ were a priority for me and derived from my approach to curation. The hub which I created, is an extension of these ideas - when putting together an exhibition, it’s important to think of the whole environment, how to make it attractive and welcoming. If artists neglect this, then the experience of their work is diminished for the visitor, and in the end for themselves. In the meantime, I have continued to create 2D/3D artworks and find the crossover between that work and the work I make in VR a fascinating way of integrating media and ideas. It is both enriching and challenging conceptually and technically - my journey of exploration continues." www.fiongunn.org/ Instagram @gunnfion www.youtube.com/c/FionGunn |
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Monair Hyman
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A new member of A-Maze Artists Collective, Monair Hyman Uses the language of pattern and the ornamental to portray the delicacy and persistence of the human spirit, she explores the possibilities of creating spaces to reimagine ways of being, untethered and without limitations.
Crotchet doilies, chinoiserie ceramics, embossed wallpapers, pastoral scenes wrapped around chocolate boxes holding recipes and letters from distant shores. Lace, coloured silk threads and swaithes of rich patterned fabrics. Tablecloths of Madras, chintz cushions and hand embroidered Irish linen. Garden plots of herbs and perennial borders. These were the backdrop of her childhood. The creative endeavours of women in her life underpins Hyman’s practice. Absurdities, fanciful and wild juxtapositions were carefully constructed celebrations of life. The act of arranging, crafting, preserving, observing and the consideration of the viewer as the lens through which to see is something all these women shared. These strong women curated their own spaces of resistance that mirrored the multiple layers of their reality. Harbours of refuge, joy and community and bound to all of this was the hope of a better life. Growing up in an environment filled with material culture was always her visual playground. Drawn to the ornamental and pattern, Hyman is fascinated by the stories they hold. The power of embellishment and adornment is inextricably linked to her identity. Critical to her enquiry is a feminine framework employing abstraction and the decorative. She reflects on themes of self, ‘Other’, identity, absence, the complexities of love and the vulnerability of bodies. Her work is at once personal and political, and her aesthetic is a rebellious understanding of space where she challenges conventions of (mis) representation and (mis) information to pose questions around dominant narratives that have existed historically and continue in contemporary life. How might these be reimagined? Hyman takes inspiration from domestic thresholds, historical textile and costume collections, Western portraiture and pastoral landscape painting. Whilst looking out to ‘Other’ cultures her work is informed by Japanese Ukiyo-e and Shunga wood block prints along with histories of display and masquerade. This rich subject matter provides context for much of her work. Her practice encompasses paintings in oil paint over canvases of a grand scale to smaller intimate works on paper in graphite, charcoal, ink and collage. She works with a limited palette showing a flattened picture space and attention to surface. Often using repetitive forms that are influx or disrupted. These are not repeated patterns. They endeavour to resist recognition and any concrete figuration has been removed from the composition. What remains are lush botanical motifs and linear forms that take centre stage. Hyman interrogates techniques that play with visibility and erasure. Echoing the transience and impermanence of the world around her. By blurring, obscuring, dragging, applying paint with varying speeds, directions, tensions and playing with scale. In paintings floral forms emerge and fade away. In other works, botanicals are hidden in the webs and wefts of paint. She sets up labyrinthine games involving the gaze and physical presence of the spectator. Performative in outlook, opulent motifs become the objects of desire. Playful, flirtatious and quietly subversive. In her pursuit of absence and beauty Hyman acknowledges the women who have always made and continue to make beautiful things. Through wars, conflict and dark times. It is as relevant today as it was in the past. Pattern and ornamentation is not only a way to explain a surface it is also a way of living. Throughout her work, the viewer is requested to step into these unapologetically ornate and imagined environments. Much like a traveller, the spectator is invited to take a leap of faith to navigate their own way through. For what is offered within the work is escape, freedom, hopes and dreaming. Links: www.monairhyman.com Instagram @monairhyman Maureen Kendal |
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Maureen Kendal offers a vision of migration, trauma and joy. Experiencing an immersive world, may open up deep wells of forgotten emotions, because we are all people, migrating from trauma, trying to survive in unfamiliar territories and seeking out connections.
Title: Remembrance Dance By Maureen Kendal "We bring with us unfolding memories, subliminal, epi-genetic, prehistoric, ancient, historical and futuristic when we wash up on new shores. Our old languages and music get lost in translation, our recollections reconfigured. “We invite our participatory audience to collect traces, remnants, memory-triggers of their time with us in our virtual multiverse, we also invite them to witness the current time. Gathering visual/audio collectibles from the flotsam and jetsam washed up on our immersive shores or hidden in virtual forests and caves, we ask our users to create their own story. This narrative offers hope and transformation for women and children who find themselves fleeing as a result of war, whilst this war can be external, sometimes war zones are within the domestic space. As director of an organization which combats cyber-abuse, the artist supports at first hand, families who find themselves vulnerable and under threat, in dysfunctional family relationships, often triggered by external conflicts, (Cybercare, 2021). Myths of tragedy and transformation are reflected across many diverse cultures echoing these narratives, e.g: the myth of Hecabe (Croally, 2007)), the story of Ruth, (Gottleib Zornberg, A. 2009). Features of this artwork enable users to remember ancient untold memories, to gather and collect, to reframe and to manipulate scale, to tap into auditory worm-holes. Visitors have opportunities to write poetic notes and to transform memories by acts of re-creation, each one a new journey. When we were working together on this first digital project Gunn, 2021 outlined our approach “Visitors can follow pathways through our multiverse without repeating themselves and that their experience can be open-ended and always differentiated” No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man” (Heraclitus circa 535 BC/ BCE) or woman." Ardern Hulme-Beaman
Ardern Hulme-Beaman’s work emerges from a dual foundation in the natural sciences and digital heritage, where long-standing academic research intersects with an evolving artistic practice. With a background situated at the boundaries of ecology, archaeology, and zoology, Hulme-Beaman has developed a research profile that engages closely with the interplay between biological form, environmental pressures, and deep time. These themes now echo through his visual work.
Title: Finding my feet by Ardern Hulme-Beaman "These are ancient crane footprints, dating back 5,000-8,000 years, discovered on Formby Beach in the UK's Northwest. Preserved in mud from a time when the area was marshland due to lower sea levels, these footprints offer a glimpse into the past. As the sea level rose, the marshland submerged, and layers of sand covered the mud. Recent centuries have seen shifts in sea currents around Merseyside and the Wirral. The northern Merseyside beaches are eroding, while the southern Wirral, south of Liverpool and the Mersey River, sees mud deposition, transforming into marshland. This cyclic process, involving erosion in some areas and deposition in others, unfolds over millennia and is caused by sea level fluctuations, changing currents, and shifting river courses. These are among the first such footprints I found on Formby Beach and started my interest in capturing them. Nothing is permanent and these are the edges of footprints being worn away. These footprints might have fossilised like dinosaur footprints if there was a hillside or mountain beside this area, and if that hillside had a landslide that covered the mud flats, or if there was significant sea-level rise that covered these footprints rather than wash them away. But for these footprints that’s not the case and they are disappearing into the waves. When considered like this, it’s extraordinary that we see these footprints at all and it always makes me consider the things we don’t see – the flocks of birds that circled or never landed on these muddy surfaces. Or the birds that when they did land on the mud surface were maybe too small and light to leave any impression at all." This intersection of science, technology, and heritage underpins Hulme-Beaman’s artistic work, which explores what endures and what is lost across time, whether as footprint, artefact, or fleeting trace. Working across photography, animation, augmented reality and, more recently, sculptural media, Ardern Hulme-Beaman engages with the temporal and ecological dynamics of landscapes. His practice investigates the complex intersections between environment, time, and human presence, often expressed not through direct representation, but through what is left behind, obscured, or absent. Much of Hulme-Beaman’s recent work focuses on the notion of impermanence and transition within both natural and human-influenced ecologies. Through a methodical examination of footprints (those of birds, mammals, and other life forms) found in sand, snow, and mud, his photographic work captures a moment poised between preservation and erasure. These impressions, sometimes thousands of years old and other times just minutes, act as a meditation on the fragility of record and memory. The images themselves often resist easy interpretation: their granular textures and abstract forms have been described as almost extraterrestrial, evocative of remote landscapes like those captured by the Mars rover. Alongside this photographic enquiry, Hulme-Beaman uses photogrammetry, 3D modelling, and augmented reality to extend the visibility of these traces beyond their physical presence. Through mobile applications, viewers can encounter virtual bird flocks that are triggered within real-world environments; these ephemeral, digital entities echo the fleeting natural movements they seek to reference. In doing so, Hulme-Beaman invites reflection on the paradox of digital permanence: the way contemporary technologies can capture phenomena previously unpreservable, such as bird flight, while remaining inherently fragile themselves, contingent upon societal systems, formats, and infrastructures that may not endure. Although his subject matter touches on human settlement, urbanisation, and environmental transformation, human figures and structures rarely appear directly. Instead, the work explores the edges, examining the peripheries where natural and constructed environments converge. A fox footprint alongside a tourist shelter in the desert, a lizard’s track beneath information signage, these juxtapositions attempt to explore subtle, layered interactions across time and space. Recent developments in the artist’s practice have extended this inquiry into physical media, with wire and felt sculptures contrasting with industrial materials with tactile, organic forms. These new sculptural works, featuring wool-felted birds in metal foliage scenes, continue an interest in the interplay between medium, behaviour, and preservation, shifting from digital augmentation to handmade presence and the contrast of materials. Shoran Jiang
Shoran Jiang is an artist, writer, and art educator based in London, She was one of the 2024 Mental Canvas resident artists. Since 2022, Shoran has been using Mental Canvas to blend traditional Chinese elements with modern video game characters, creating a unique fusion of past and present, history and fiction. In her practice, Shoran aims to inspire young people to learn more about Chinese history and culture. Her work is not only visually stunning but also deeply researched, bringing ancient traditions to life in a way that feels fresh and accessible. When she participated in A-Maze Artists' Boundless: Transitions exhibition in October 2023 She ran themed workshops before and during the exhibition, exploring topics such as "Food in a Dreamed Island," "Food from Your Hometown," "Dreamed Plants," and "Dreamed Buildings." Participants, including children, created artworks which were later showcased as AR pop-ups within the exhibition. Visitors were encouraged to contribute additional digital elements, such as drawings and texts, during the exhibition, creating a collective and evolving virtual island that invites them to revisit and engage with the space on multiple levels. During the workshops, the app (Artivive, Mental Canvas) or software (Unity) were introduced and demonstrated to participants, enabling them to experience and interact with the AR pop-ups more fully. Fragments of poetry, including lines such as "what strength I have’s mine own," floated within the AR space, reinforcing themes of resilience and transformation while adding a poetic layer of meaning to the audience's experience. In China, Shoran was given academic education of Chinese traditional techniques, painting compositions and aesthetics. However London has opened up her vision. She has also been influenced by western female artists, such as Frida Kahlo, Leonor Fini and Tracy Emin. These women artists create artworks with profound personal will and life experience. The way they are not intent to follow the rules to express themselves has greatly affected Shoran. Then she chooses the women’s perspective, the theme of suicide, for further studies and experiments. A Western critic commented, “ If Shoran’s works are only viewed from the origin of the oriental culture, there will be a foreseeable mistake to derive a narrative conclusion. The way and the sophistication she reveals to us is somewhere else, some other world, or rather an entire world.” In my opinion, “the somewhere else, the some other world” Shoran is revealing is her inner world, her actual experience of the cruelty of life, the experience that women in the world have in common." Links: www.shoranjiang.com/ Instagram @shoranjiang Nazia Parvez
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Nazia Parvez engages with topographical and emotional displacement, creating a field of wheat within a specific location in a virtual city which could be London, New York or endless 'elsewheres' which visitors can wander through.
Title: Displacement By Nazia Parvez The A-Maze group created a shared space in which I was able to connect with other artists. It provided a forum for us to discuss our experiences of the pandemic and the impact of lockdowns both collectively and individually. These discussions were a means to explore different ideas and themes — both those I have an ongoing interest in — and others that were either new or less familiar. The themes that emerged from our interaction have either directly or indirectly informed my personal project: ‘Displacement’ and also sparked new projects. Given my background in architecture and urbanism, I’m interested in how the pandemic has transformed how we experience and interact with our physical environments and with each other. The lockdowns have shifted some of our conventional ideas around space and place, community, connection, public and private, and what it means to be present. They’ve catalyzed a shift from an ‘embodied’ experience of our environments to a disembodied connection with a constructed space, a kind of hybrid of physical and virtual elements. It’s been interesting and valuable to explore the interconnection of these themes with those the other artists are pursuing. Links: formblu.com/about Instagram @formblu.art @formblu.ai |
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Alan Hudson
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Alan Hudson - Alan has always been fascinated by both Arts and Science and its integration, he describes his creative journey: "I love clock movements, intricate machinery and how this mesmerises viewers. I enjoy watching the expressions on visitors’ faces in the clock room of the British Museum. In my workshop I design and make stained glass windows and lamps, experimenting with the changing illumination. I love seeing my enthusiasm for glass spread to my customers. I was torn at school (and made timetables difficult) by wanting to study both arts and science. I compromised by studying Physics with Electronics at Leicester University but followed this by completing a degree with the Open University where I could study Science, Mathematics, Technology, IT, Art, and Social Science in one degree. In my spare time I painted, experimenting in Photography and film and helped produce a number of Pub Theatre shows. I worked for 15 yrs in Commercial IT as a Systems Programmer and then IT manager. Growing bored with this I began lecturing in IT at various London Universities and opened my stained glass business. Later I moved into lecturing in multi media which enables wonderful combinations of Art and IT to be created. Much of my work was centred around 3D worlds such as Second Life. I ran a Masters course in e-learning and ran summer schools within Second Life. This was a highly imaginative environment where students could build fantastic 3D environments and learn coding at the same time. Workshops which ran on campus would begin noisy, but as students logged into Second Life the room would go silent. The students were totally immersed in the 3D environment only communicating with me and their classmates via text in Second Life. I used Second Life to help training and communications in the international EU Funded project GLADNET. This was a European wide project involving teams researching in spectrometry. Members of the project used Second Life for demonstrations and training in the use of Spectrometers. I collaborated with Maureen Kendal in an educational project 'On the Beach'. This encouraged students to use their imagination and begin to use the tools within Second Life to tell stories. I also built an industry sponsored warehouse in Second Life for warehouse Health and Safety training. Following University lecturing I developed New Synthetic Theatre (NST) 1 and 2. These were theatre shows within Second Life in which the audience's avatars were the actors on stage. NST 1 was based on the 99% protests around St Paul's Cathedral in London, NST 2 told three stories, The Wise Me of Gotham (who try to capture the reflection of the moon in their nets) Kubla Khan (where the audience visits Xanadu) and Jabberwocky (where the audience slaughter the Jabberwocky with their Vorpal sword). NST 1 and 2 ran for approximately 10 years 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. NST 1: youtu.be/LiKO3ta6InE NST 2: https://youtu.be/yTZnNKmorDw I am currently working on NST 3. This will be a real life model theatre accessed online via Web pages and video streaming. The audience will be able to react and change the theatre environment (changing lighting, mood and music etc). The theatre will be fully automatic using small programmable microprocessors such as Raspberry Pis and ESP8266. The first show will depict the cumulative story The House that Jack Built. Alongside NST 3 I am working with solar power and wind turbines using microprocessors for domestic applications. NST 3 could be solar and wind powered." |
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Amy Jackson
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Jacqueline Amy Jackson is known for her darkly humorous works, which tread lightly and consciously on the planet despite their critical social and environmental undertones. Jackson is commonly considered a conceptual artist traversing a myriad of mediums to explore tragedies of the human condition in the hypercapitalist era. She reveals unseen truths and camouflages hidden messages into her minimalist and meticulous acts.
As a climate specialist and human rights advocate her practice blends philosophy, nature and science to create immersive experiences in traditional galleries and unconventional spaces. Her work includes street art, happenings, sculpture and installation whilst exploring issues such as climate change, consumerism, mental health, social inequalities and how these themes are inextricably linked. Her work often exists outside of the ‘white cube’ and inside the communities it touches. Her work focuses upon achieving social justice through both medium and practice. She was the first artist to publicly declare to give away 50% of all profits in life and after death to other artists pioneering worthy causes through the JUST Art Award. She also dedicates her spare time to curating shows which provide a platform to underrepresented artists by disrupting the traditional art fair and gallery models. Jackson created Capital, 2020, Chelsea Telephone Exchange, London, UK: 2020. Participatory installation, weighing scales, candles, coins, Link. A moment of meditation for lives lost as a result of corporate decision-making. As viewers deposit currency, details of different fatal corporate failures are exposed, revealing how social capital valuations—kept unadjusted across socioeconomic and regional contexts—systematically devalue certain lives. By juxtaposing literal weight with the moral gravity of financial decisions, the work dissects the commodification of human life in global markets. This piece interrogates how “objective” economic methodologies obscure inequities, ultimately inviting participants to confront the ethical underpinnings of corporate capitalism and its disparate impacts on vulnerable populations. Her most notable work Cleaning Squares, referencing mental health and the state of the environment, has seen thousands of ephemeral squares appear around the world since 2005. Other works engage with topics such as the environment, consumerism and social inequality, often imagining and bringing to life future dystopias. “All art is political and most artists want to change something in the world… to spur action,” Jackson once commented, a statement that reflects her vision of using art as a tool to inspire change. Links: www.thisisamyjackson.com/ Instagram @thisismyamyjackson |
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Lila Moore
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Dr Lila Moore is the founder of The Cybernetic Futures Institute (CFI), a networked platform and online academy for the exploration and study of tech-noetic arts and consciousness with an emphasis on the spiritual in art and film. The CFI's creative activities and online courses are metaphorically embedded in proto-type 'morphic fields.' The fields are activated by Networked Rites of Compassion, which are designed to counteract the prevalent narrative of violence.
Describing a current project 'In Days of Yore – Technoetic Installation and Screen Dance' Lila writes "Imagine a time when the necessary things had just been brought into manifest existence. When bread was tasted for the first time in the shrines of the land. When the ovens of the land were made to work. When the heavens were separated from the earth, and the earth was delimited from the heavens. When the fame of humankind was first established. In Days of Yore is a screen-dance and immersive technoetic installation that reimagines the mythic world of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Underworld, merging it with NASA’s AI-analyzed satellite imagery of regions devastated by forest fires and deforestation. This convergence between the oldest known written myth, inscribed in Sumerian cuneiform around 2100 BCE, and the emergent language of artificial intelligence creates a unique aesthetic dialogue, one that bridges archaic and technoetic consciousness. The powers and patterns of destruction and regeneration—hallmarks of human civilization—are embodied and visualized through the movements of dancing women and mythical beings from antiquity: the Anzu bird, goddesses Inanna and Ishtar with their lions, and Lilith with her serpent. These figures weave through liminal and elemental landscapes shaped both by primordial myth and digital machine. The NASA visuals were processed using GANs—Generative Adversarial Networks—a machine learning framework in which two neural networks—the generator and the discriminator—engage in a dynamic feedback loop to create and refine images. This cybernetic process parallels the human faculties of imagination and critique, offering an alternative vision of the Earth’s wounds as perceived by non-human intelligence, aesthetically formalised by the artist’s technoetic and choreographic sensibilities. To counteract the dominant narrative of violence towards nature and human beings, first echoed in the Sumerian myth, this installation restores the wisdom of imaginal realms—of goddesses, priestesses, scribes, and visionaries. Through ritualistic imagery, tactile materials, and evocative scents, the installation invites each visitor into an embodied and noetic journey—to physically and creatively re-enter the mythic dimension of the First Time. The installation consists of screen panels or projections reminiscent of two-dimensional Sumerian reliefs. Each panel is dedicated to a central theme: the Elements Panel, Forest Panel, Ishtar Panel, Bread Panel, and Perfume Panel. The Perfume Panel references the ancient Perfume Road and its intertwined commercial and sacred functions. Visitors are invited to become participants in the rewriting and transformation of humanity’s foundational myth—for the First Time. In Days of Yore is a crossroads—a movement across time, memory, myth, language, and machine, weaving the archaic with the futuristic in order to re-enchant and reclaim the present. Links www.cyberneticinstitute.com Instagram @cybernetic_entities |
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Audrey Mullins
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When asked about her work recently, Irish diaspora artist Audrey Mullins responded:
"My practice encompasses painting, which reclaims the language of landscape, deconstructing imagery to expose the contested histories embedded in place. Exploring themes of empire, gender, race and power, I examine contemporary issues, challenging traditional narratives and exploring the legacy of colonialism and exploitation. The work allows me to address the past while searching for a way of being in the world. I explore places which are overlooked, which though beautiful are undervalued and whose histories are sometimes ignored. This awareness of underrated environments, mirrored socially by communities and individuals who are excluded and rendered invisible. This work questions who gets to claim the land and how memory, mythology and ancient stories can perpetuate imperial narratives. I want to challenge viewers to confront the dynamic actions, roles and responsibilities that shape our shared and individual realities. Drawing inspiration from ancient stories and mythology, my paintings constantly evolve and change suggesting unanswered questions, un-concluded narratives and the fear of un-consequentiality – issues which haunt so many women artists. These recent small works on paper invites introspection and dialogue, offering an exploration of the human condition. From a female perspective the paintings challenge the notion of power, order, ownership and knowledge." Links: audreymullins.weebly.com/ Instagram @akmullinsartist |
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